BOOK ONE
1881-1944
M a serati T H E FA M I LY S I LV E R NIGEL TROW
P E LH A M P R E S S
Alfieri Maserati’s nonchalence as he leans against Trucco’s Isotta before start of the 1907 Targa Florio characterises the man.
In the early days of racing, drivers were their own pit crews. Carlo Maserati, black with dirt. stands ready with water during the Kaiserpreis.
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A little over two and a half hours after setting off, the Isotta was back at the start, beginning the second of the three laps to loud fanfares from the Sicilian band which marked the completion of each circuit. Trucco and Maserati lay third, exactly one minute behind the leader, Lancia. Cagno, in an Itala, was second and Nazzarro was fourth. It was a fine beginning for Isotta, and for the young mechanic. Sadly, their success was short lived. On the second lap a wheel was smashed. Since they carried no spare, repairs were impossible and Trucco and Maserati’s race was run. Their performance, however, was more than creditable. Lancia’s first lap average speed of 54.kph set the lap record. Trucco averaged 54.36kph. Both he and Maserati had reason to be pleased with themselves. Six weeks after returning to Milan the Isotta team set off for Germany, and the Kaiserpreis. This was another touring car race, but one run under slightly different rules and circumstances. Sponsored by the Kaiser himself, for Alfieri Maserati it had additional significance since his elder brother, Carlo, was making his racing debut in one of Bianchi’s new, specially prepared 8-litre cars. Isotta Fraschini, too, had entered several modified machines for the German race, which had rather more precise regulations than those of the Targa, where only a simple bore to weight relationship was stipulated. In Germany, by contrast, engine size was restricted to 8-litres and weight to a minimum of 1,165kg. Other minor constraints were also imposed, but though all cars had to derive from production models, homologation was not required, allowing manufacturers to make whatever special preparations they liked. Both brothers were deeply involved in preparing and testing their new cars, Carlo working with Merosi and Tomaselli, the second Bianchi driver, to ensure that their employer’s first venture into motor racing was successful. Alfieri, too, took a full part with Trucco in improving the latest Tipo ‘I’ Isotta Fraschini, a considerably more powerful 85bhp machine than they had raced in Sicily. Long hours in the workshop were followed by longer ones on the road. These were innovative times. The organisation of international racing was also changing. Because of the distance from Milan to Homburg, where the race started, it is likely that both firms shipped their cars to Germany by train, there now being three rail tunnels under the Alps. The newest of these, the Simplon, had opened in 1906, and both this tunnel and the St Gotthard took trains from Milan rapidly into Switzerland, and then on to Germany. Sending racing cars and their crews to the Taunus circuit by this means thus offered many advantages over the old method of driving the cars to the race, particularly when it meant crossing the Alps.
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Parma - Poggio di Berceto, 1923. Alfieri at the wheel, Ernesto as riding mechanic in the Diatto 20S 61
Type 26 no 12, with Alfieri Maserati waiting to start the 1926 Targa Florio. The second car built, it has a forged front axle and Perrot brakes. Alfieri finished eighth, and won the 1500cc class.
In a period of great creativity, Alfieri and his brothers not only produced new machines but were forced to consider the promotion of the firm. The elegant folder of photographs and sketches published at the time demonstrated their underlying conservativism, however, in the typography.
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turning point in their fortunes, began in early summer, following some 12 months gestation. As ever, the emphasis lay with power in pursuit of victory, and in September 1928 the first drawings had been made of a twin block V16 engine called the V4. Not content with one new project, however, the firm’s chief draughtsman, Sig Forni, simultaneously supervised the initial drawings of Alfieri’s latest 2,500cc straight-eight engine, and its subsequent adaptation to the five-litre V16, the V5 of 1931. These V-engine developments were characteristic of the time, horse power being central to racing success. With the exception of Lancia, no manufacturer in Italy had grasped the significance of improved suspension, chassis design and weight disposition on high speed performance. Elsewhere, traditional cart-sprung chassis sat on relatively heavy axles propelled by as much horsepower as possible. Size mattered more than comportment. With the confirmation of Formula Libre as the dominant racing class, an even stronger signal was sent, and the way seemed open to develop yet bigger engines. After all, the World Land Speed
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For Borzacchini and Nuvolari, days at sea sailing to Sicily or Tripoli were relaxed, easy times. Less so for mechanics, who frequently continued their final fettleing on board. 169
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7 At 10.30 in the morning
At 10.30 in the morning of 3 March, 1932, Alfieri Maserati died suddenly in a Bologna hospital, two days after an operation for kidney stones. He was 44 years old. The unexpectedness of his going shocked his friends, the city and everyone in motor racing who knew and respected him. Only his brothers might have had some slight intimation of his mortality, knowing he had been left vulnerable by the terrible injuries sustained four years earlier at Messina. That accident had left him with just one kidney, and recently it had begun to fail, sending him into hospital at the end of February. Yet even knowing how ill he was had done nothing to prepare them for the inability of the most skilled surgeons in Bologna to save him. His sudden death was unanticipated and devastating, leaving the Maserati company holed just above the waterline. The funeral followed immediately. On 5 March, a grey, cold day, the citizens of Bologna turned out en masse to watch in silence as his cortege passed. It had snowed. Alfieri’s coffin was carried on the shoulders of six workmen from the Pontevecchio factory, where it had lain since his death, to the Chiesa di S Maria Lacrimosa degli Alemanni, his local church. The streets, banked with snow and flowers, thronged with great crowds of mourners, many deep as the huge procession passed towards the church. Inside, the great and good of Italian motor racing awaited him Vincenzo Florio, Vittorio Jano, Ettore Bugatti, Enzo Ferrari, Eduardo Weber, Ing Cattaneo from Isotta, Gianferrari from Alfa Romeo. The Dukes of Bergamo and Spoleto were there, with Fascist authority represented by Arpinati and Balbo, two of the new condottieri. And there were the drivers; many, many racing drivers among the throng of politicians, aristocrats, wealthy clients,
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